The director of Carlisle Trust Ltd, Mr John Byrne, told the tribunal it never crossed his mind that the lodgment of £180,000 worth of Dunnes Stores cheques to the account of the trust and the subsequent payout of two cheques of the same total without his knowledge could have constituted a money-laundering operation.
Three cheques, drawn on a Dunnes Stores account, to the value of £49,620, £50,962 and £79,418, were lodged to the trust account in November 1992. Mr Des Traynor instructed a company which provided accounting and administration services to Carlisle Trust Ltd to draw two cheques on the company's account: one made out to Celtic Helicopters for £100,000 and another to £80,000 cash.
Mr Byrne testified that in late 1994 or early 1995 he was contacted by the Bank of Ireland Rotunda branch which advised him that they had received a request for discovery of cheques from solicitors acting for Ms Margaret Heffernan in a High Court action against her brother, Mr Ben Dunne. It had come to light that three Dunnes Stores cheques had been lodged to the account of Carlisle. Mr Byrne was "amazed" by this and made immediate inquiries to Patrick McCann of Management Investment Services Ltd, the company which provided administration and accounting services to Carlisle Trust. He was advised by Mr McCann that £180,000 had indeed been received from Dunnes Stores Ireland and paid out immediately on the instructions of Mr Traynor, who was Carlisle's financial adviser and a director of the trust.
Mr McCann did not know why these payments had been put through, and he believed Mr Traynor had died before he came to know of the transactions. Mr Traynor had not advised him of the transactions and he was disappointed that he should have used the companies bank account for the transactions that had nothing whatever to do with the company. It did not occur to him that the transactions through the account were a matter he might have brought to the attention of Dunnes Stores. "I assumed all this was done for the benefit of somebody . . . I assumed Dunnes would have known where the £180,000 went to . . . I assumed they would have some kind of records."
As regards the cheque for £80,000, he agreed that such a substantial cheque made out to cash was a most unusual event. Any inquiries he would have made about the cheque "would have been to Pat McCann and that would have been the end of that".
However, he does not remember what instructions he gave Mr McCann. He could not tell Mr McCann to whom he should inquire about the £80,000 because he had no idea where it went. Mr McCann "didn't come up with anything conclusive" in the course of his inquiries about the money, according to Mr Byrne.
He did not think of the transactions again until they were drawn to his attention in 1997 when he received a letter from the Bank of Ireland about the cheques, following inquiries by the authorised officer looking into the affairs of Celtic Helicopters. He then decided to bring the matter to the attention of the tribunal.
He was not reminded of the transactions by reports of the McCracken tribunal or by the revelation that Ben Dunne paid over £1 million to Mr Haughey, he told counsel for the tribunal, Mr John Coughlan.
Mr Pat Monaghan, who works in the Bank of Ireland legal department, testified that he had given advice on whether details of the Carlisle Trust account could be released to Dunnes Stores in January 1994.
Questioned about Celtic Helicopters, Mr Byrne agreed he had made an investment in the company around November 1992, having been approached by the director the firm, John Barnacle. He knew Mr Ciaran Haughey was "co-director or partner or whatever you like". However, if he or his agents had made any inquiry about the £100,000 cheque to Celtic Helicopters it would have been to John Barnacle as his impression was that he knew more about what was going on.
